Winners in corporate and commercial banking are leaping ahead of the competition by leveraging technology to accelerate digital innovation and gain efficiencies, developing a substantial cost advantage. Although it is difficult to achieve the same benefits as new, greenfield entrants to the segment, leading banks are turning to a diverse technology toolkit to transform their product and service platforms digitally.

Celent interviewed bank executives who have undertaken significant innovation and transformation projects about their winning technology strategies and tactics. We focused our discussions on five themes underlying dramatic investment shifts in corporate banking:

Most bankers felt that all five themes are critical to accelerating innovation and transformation in corporate banking—with optimizing customer engagement taking the top spot. Comparing importance to maturity/capabilities, the widest gap exists in leveraging data and analytics, reflecting a nascent investment area for corporate and commercial bankers. The report also previews data from the upcoming report, IT Strategy and Priorities in Corporate Banking, 2022, set to be released in June 2022. The report highlights strong growth in 2022 IT budgets, followed by a more significant increase in 2023.

For this report, Celent interviewed executives from CIBC, Citi, HSBC, PNC Bank, and U.S. Bank.